Rakaydos

...Yes, they do that a lot. Rarely does anything come of it. They still have issues actually DOING anything that doesn't involve hardware handed down by the Soviets.

The idea is maximum mass behind a minimum of atmospheric drag, so you lose as little kinetic energy to aero drag as possible. Higher density is good, but at least the cap needs to be able to handle the usual problems of the bow shock, particularly at the velocities it will experience shortly befor impact. guidance is relatively easy, a thruster in the back that turns the rod slightly side on, steering with body lift the same way the Falcon 9 returns.

More than that, the plan has always been to refuel them on mars and bring them back, with all the life support and amenities still installed. (and possibly with people who decide mars is not for them aboard.) That's going to require earth dowmass. Point to point is also earth downmass, even though it's not going to be "up" for very long.

Those "cheat codes" are the entire reason this thread exists. A properly paranoid person wouldnt just take Elon's "5 mil to build, 2 mil to launch" numbers on faith, but actually assume it will be CHEAPER, that Elon is making it sound more expensive to milk more money out of the goverment.

Looks pinkish, so probably red when lit/not in daylight.

Again you deflect and avoid the question. Your cold war rockets, that put probes on the moon before the americans... how much do they cost to fly? Can starship literally flood the skies with landers for less than it would cost to put enough defensive weapons to stop them? Can your nation sustain that kind of economc drag?

And how much does that rocket cost to fly? Can SpaceX throw cheap stainless rockets at the moon for less than cold war era rockets can send anti-starship weapons? Can america force you to drain your economy stopping them?

But that doesnt answer the question... how does it get on the moon?

All of that is just First Mover advantage- the first one to put that sort of thing on the moon can shoot down what anyone else brings to the moon. Right now, it's looking like Starship is gong to be that first mover. Denying the moon and mars (and wherever else they want) to other nations forever. Unless your nation does a crash program to get there first.

"Everything should be as simple as possible- and NO MORE SIMPLE THAN THAT." -Albert Einstein

It will be nice when the EIS is finished and Starship finally does what the N1 failed to do.

Sounds like a waste of rubles to me...

Really? If it had actual purpose, what was it used for? and when?

...Overbuild for possibly a 200 ton booster to misjudge landing velocity?

But SURELY Russia wouldnt fall for that AGAIN, after Buran...

I suck at orbital timing, and often play without the tracking station enabled. Phasing orbit to get within 10 KM, 100m/s closing, walking in the intercept with angled retro thrust, zero out within 100m, then lock a docking port, get a good angle, approach at 5m/s and walk in in with thrust limited main engines, tapping the throttle during the bounce to ensure a connection.

Interesting- I've read early scifi involving "magnetic scoops" for Ramscoop fusion drives- it sounds like that's the same principle, in reverse?

[citation needed]

And I'm sure Rocosmos would be just as willing to take the money as Blue Origin was. But that says nothing about their ability to provide the service.

In the EDA tour part 2, elon explains that it's a prototype of a new approach to nose cone construction. Something about stretching sections over a mould? Then welding these staves into a nose cone barrel.

Alternatively, you have a separate 11th launch with 10 dragon capsules in abort-racks. No need to mess around with the tankers.

Negative mass was Dynetics, not BO... assuming that's what you were going for.

Ah yes- it's one thing to actually improve the design, another to PROVE it's been improved. Still, that's where cheap rapid reuse WILL come into play. If by iteration 60 they've nailed "3 flights a day per pad" reuse, that's 90 flights per month before the next iteration comes out of starbase. 3 months to get 270 flights, the commercial crew calculated LoC number.

I'm taking the pessimistic, plateau'ed number for now. Remember that I'm not including booster production. Also, there has to actually be some testing between revisions, and then they have to incorporate the changes into the next model. But you're right, this is not a maximum number of revisions, or a minimum, merely an expected number.